Natural Hazards, Disasters, & Catastrophes of England

This week we learned about volcanos. Just like earthquakes, volcanos are related to the location of plate tectonics. Most volcanoes are located along the Ring of Fire, which is in an upside down U shape along the regions of the Pacific Ocean. There are, however other volcanoes around the world. In areas where there is hotspot activity or portions of a mid-ocean ridge such as Iceland. The main types of volcanoes are the stratovolcanoes (or composite cone) which are shaped like a cone with high sides, eruptions consist of lava flows. There are Lava dome volcanoes which, as their name says it, they are shape like a dome and are also steep. These volcanoes mostly erupt lava piling up near the vents, although at times they can explosive. There are shield volcanoes which look more flat on the surface. These have gentle arches and very low slopes. The lava flows of these volcanoes flows on the outer ridges of their surface which travels far. The cinder cone volcanoes are tall with the to...

This week we learned about earthquakes. Very well on time for us to understand what happened in southern Mexico this Friday. Basically an earthquake occurs when two plate faults move pass each other.   These faults sometimes get stuck as the rest of the plate moves on its normal course. When they are stock they store the energy that normally would move them around, that energy gets released when they finally move from where they were stuck. These energy moves are called “seismic waves” and when they reach up to the earth’s surface they make it shake. The spot on earth’s surface where the quake starts is called the epicenter. This main spot is where the mainshock occurs, and depending on the magnitude of such earthquake there could be aftershocks for weeks and even months to come. In England, and the UK in general, there are not many occurrences of earthquakes. An average of 25 small ones are felt by people yearly. The largest known quake occurred in 1931 with a magnitu...

This week’s chapter is about plate tectonics. It explains how they move and their effects on the earth’s surface. The earth is divided into twelve different plates, most of which consists of part of a continent and part of an ocean. The diving lines of these plates are called the boundaries. On these boundaries there tend to be a lot of volcanos and earthquakes, which is called “geologic activity”.  The movements of these plates are: Divergent, where they move away from each other Transform, where they pass by each other  Convergent where they move toward each other After I had a clear understanding of plate tectonics I went ahead and research about England’s location when it comes to plate tectonics’ locations and boundaries.  I discovered that it is on the Eurasian plate but it is not near its boundary. This means that currently there is no tectonic activity. However, in the last 700 million years England, along ...